Author took a walk along Lake Michigan — and just kept going

In her new book, A 1,000 Mile Walk on the Beach: One Woman's Trek of the Perimeter of Lake Michigan, Loreen Niewenhuis experienced the entire coastline of one of the Great Lakes' treasured bodies of water in a way that most people never will.

During her seven-month excursion, spread over 10 segments, Niewenhuis, 47, witnessed the beauty of the lakeshore through Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana and Illinois. But she also saw industrial footprints of nuclear and coal-fired power plants and steel mills.

Niewenhuis passed through onetime blue-collar industrial towns that have since turned their sleepy hamlets into tourism destinations and saw firsthand the importance that Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes play in the state's economy.

On her website, lake trek.com, she blogs about issues affecting the Great Lakes. Crain's spoke with Niewenhuis about her travels, the lake's industrial complex, the tourism benefit of the water and more.

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Loreen Niewenhuis

Were you surprised when you saw the big industrial presence along Lake Michigan?

I've driven into Chicago 30, 40 times on the Skyway, looked down and thought, 'Wow, that's a lot of industry.' Then you zip into Chicago and forget about it.

But walking through it really brought everything to scale. And then I did a lot of research. Some of those establishments were the largest on the planet when they were built.

In America, we tend to take the industry and put it in little pockets and avoid it. By going through it, I was able to connect it. … It was very interesting for me to make those connections in a very sensory-oriented way.

During your trek, you wanted to stay as close to the lake as possible. But you were sometimes blocked by some of the industrial complexes. Was that difficult to traverse through?

It was unnerving for me to run into a tangle of railroad yards; just the scale of the industry there is very off-putting. I really wanted to stay true to staying by the lake, but there were many times I would go forward and then have to backtrack and go around to be safe and also not to trespass on these private establishments.

It was probably one of the most challenging parts of the hike, just to navigate as a pedestrian through that industrial complex. It's not something people set out to do generally, but I wanted to see the entire lakeshore. And we have certainly contorted and industrialized that lower edge of the lake.

Were there still remnants of older industrial complexes?

The steel mill in Gary, Indiana, is still in production. I was probably two miles away from it, and I could feel the pounding on my ribcage. It was very unnerving, and I really wanted to get out of Gary.

There are a lot of smaller industries sprinkled in there that are just gutted and there's nothing there. But there is quite a bit that's still going on. The South Works steel mill (in Chicago) is gone, and the land there has been scrubbed free of everything except a power station. It's all fenced off and it's just garbage and scrub now.

What are the conditions of Lake Michigan's shores?

Most of it is still pretty clean. There are remnants of the amazing lumber industry up north and in the Upper Peninsula that I didn't expect to see. That's been 100 years ago that that was all cranked up.

But there were places where I hiked on three feet of woodchips that are still there because (companies) would take the sawdust and the remnants out into the lake and dump them, and over time they would come back in. There are even places where you'll find huge boards that somehow got loose from a transport or weren't perfect, so they were tossed into the lake.

I don't think the lumber industry really befouled the beaches there. I mean, there are still people living among those areas. But there were places down around Gary and Whiting (Ind.) where I saw a sheen on the water. I wasn't doing testing on the water, but I did not drink out of the lake from Chicago to New Buffalo (Mich.). And I had a water bottle that did a three-part filter, so I did drink out of the lake the rest of the way.

I knew the BP oil refinery there is dumping toxic sludge and ammonia every day, legally, into the lake. I think it's 5,000 pounds of toxic sludge, including heavy metals. And they get around the Clean Water Act by giving (BP) an exemption because they pull in water from the lake and pre-dilute it, and then they let it out into the lake.

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Niewenhuis' route

How does each state's lakeshore compare?

An interesting thing I found is that the geology is quite varied from side to side and north to south. Lower Michigan and the whole west side is pretty much beach. There are places where there is stone, here and there, but generally we have beaches. I assumed most of Wisconsin would be like that, and it's not. There are a couple of pockets of beaches.

We in the Lower Peninsula and western Michigan have this long stretch of beach. We've done a very good job of preserving it and making it accessible because that's quite a large base of our economy — the tourist industry. In Wisconsin, they have eroding clay cliffs. So they may not have gone out of their way to preserve that stretch of lakeshore because it's just inaccessible because of the geology.

You mentioned Michigan's tourism industry. How do you think the communities along the beaches are doing in terms of attracting tourists and understanding its importance?

We're doing a pretty good job. I think the communities that are along the beaches see the value of the beaches. I did speak to one woman in Kenosha (Wis.), and she mentioned how they kind of turned their back on the lake for the longest time because they had all this blue-collar industry. And as that left, they turned toward the lake and developed their beaches, cleaned them up, put a walking path through there and put in a marina so people from Chicago could come up and put their boats.

In Kenosha, (for a long time) they let the industry kind of control the downtown waterfront. They had a tannery for many years that was dumping into the water and an American Motors plant that also was dumping some stuff into the water. They did a huge cleanup that reclaimed a lot of that land, put condos in and a couple museums. … It's really quite beautiful.

What did you learn about the importance of the lakes to Michigan's economy that you didn't know before?

I did do a little bit of research into how our economy is tied to the lakes. And the Brookings Institution estimated that at least 15 percent of our economy is either directly or indirectly related to the lakes. They also mentioned the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which is a 10-year funding initiative to improve the health of all the Great Lakes. For every dollar we (the state) put into that, Michigan will get $2 back. So, I think there are very few bills in front of Congress where you can say, 'Yes, for every dollar we put in, we're going to get two out.'

Since you experienced the lake firsthand, have there been any federal agencies in contact with you about what you've seen?

There hasn't been anyone from the government. But from the Alliance for the Great Lakes, I've talked to people there and they have my book. It is kind of a nice way to see the entire holistic picture of the lake, so they are using it.